This is an important one. If you don't know who your audience is, you don't know whether or not the content you're creating is truly having a positive impact in your niche. Sure, you can rely on keyword research and analytics to steer you in the right direction, and you should, but you should also consider forming a deep understanding of who your audience is, what they want and what problems they're facing.
Keep in mind that making money from your blog takes time. After all, there is a reason that learning how to make money from a blog is the last step in my guide. You need to make sure you have followed all the previous steps perfectly in order to give yourself the best chance of earning a substantial income from blogging. This will not happen overnight, but most bloggers find that the work itself is rewarding enough to continue on the journey.
My intention is to begin immediately with my new blog. I want to focus around the service industry more specifically about addiction. It is a huge epidemic in this country and I do not feel that there is enough information out there, real to life information for people to read. As a product of my own demons and at this stage in my life I feel that I have much to offer in this regard. I would just like a little feedback from you about the idea, and perhaps how you would go about laying something like that out online.

I would also suggest that if bloggers have the time, they need to think about their social media strategy too as this can help amplify your posts. I’m not talking about just setting up social accounts for the sake of it, but to really think about what platforms your social audience is most likely to be using. And not to start off with them all at once, see how it goes and adapt and refine. Once you’ve got the foundations right then look to open it up to other platforms.

I’m so excited for you! I can’t wait to hear about all your success. As you move through these steps, remember to work in bite-sized chunks and keep the blog income formula plastered to the top of your brain. This will help you earn money from blogging as quickly as possible, because you’ll know exactly what you need to do to turn your blog into a blogging for profit machine.
And if you want to maximize your blog’s potential for earning an income (maybe the reason you're learning how to start a blog in the first place?), then it’s always worth it to own your platform and go with a self-hosted WordPress blog, powered by a hosting provider like Bluehost that'll have your back on any of the technical questions & issues you run into.
According to the State of the Blogging Industry 2017, professional bloggers average $138,046 in annual profit. That’s certainly a respectable salary if you ask us. In other words, we dare say that professional blogging is a viable career choice, though it is notable that the path there will be long and rough because it is largely a do-it-yourself industry.
Focus your efforts on these keywords for now. Choose a big one that will take longer to reach, as well as three to four additional terms you're going to try to rank for. These should all be similar! Then, you're going to include these keywords in each blog post you make in various combinations. Always focus your posts on one term, and include the others only if they make sense. As you focus on these similar keywords the search engines will start to rank you more highly because your blog is tightly focused and relevant to what you're targeting.
What is your ”spin”? To set yourself apart from the crowd, you’ll need to do something different and interesting with your content. Will you have an interactive focus? Focus on bizarre day-to-day news events instead of celebrity dish? Whatever you choose to blog about, make sure that you have ways to approach it creatively and that you can consistently offer new, exciting content.

When anyone asks me about starting a professional money making blog I always recommend them to use self hosted WordPress as it’s the best platform for bloggers. I always recommend to new bloggers to use BlueHost to host their new blogs. You can get BlueHost’s high quality hosting for $2.95 per month (36 months sign up) Use this link to get a free domain name with your hosting.

Ninja Popups – The best $20 I’ve spent on my website in 2015. This one lets you create a popup windows that show up in front of your content and can help you readers to sign up for your newsletter, share your website on Facebook and many other things. It helps me to add about 30% more new email subscribers a day to my Positivity Newsletter. To not annoy people, be sure that his window is only shown once for each of your readers.

However if you are NOT clear on this and you don’t mind spending some time doing research, one of the best things you can do is start reaching out to people with your “best guess” offer and see how that goes. In the case of blogging that means writing about the subject area you want to focus on, even if you are not clear how exactly you fit into that niche yet.
What does it mean to deliver value? Either your posts have to be extremely informative, in that they teach people how to do something useful, or they need to be entertaining or provide value in another format. Your posts also need to be engaging. Don’t expect people to spend a lot of time or even share any of your content if your posts don’t deliver value and they’re not engaging.
That means, once again, you shouldn’t try to replicate what another blog is doing. Instead, you should choose one channel to focus on and master it before implementing additional channels. You’re obviously reading this post because you want to start to blog, which means you shouldn’t move into video marketing or podcasting until you’re publishing consistently and generating a consistent amount of traffic.
Recognition for yourself or your business. No, you probably won’t have paparazzi following you around because of your latest blog post. But a successful blog can gain you a ton of recognition in your respective field. Many bloggers are known as experts just because of their blogs, and some have even gotten book and movie deals based on their blogs.
29. Videos – This could be an entire section on it’s own. Many people have made money by creating YouTube videos. Evan of EvanTube is a kid and he has made millions by creating reviews of products that other kids his age would use. It’s not easy to get views into the millions, but once you do, you’ll start seeing some cash come in. Many bloggers have completely turned to videos to get their point across by starting a video blog.

You can also strategically rely on traditional post formats to help you along the way. At the end of the day, as long as your information is interesting, relevant, and sourced reliably, you’re on the right track. Don’t be afraid to experiment, but keep in mind it’s smarter to break the rules on purpose than by mistake. Read and learn from popular blogs in your niche and try out what works best for them.

With a business account, you’ll have access to Pinterest Analytics, as well as the ability to create “Rich Pins.” You can also pay Pinterest to promote your pins with a business account, but that’s definitely not necessary. We experimented with about $50 worth of promoted pins before figuring out we could make our pins go viral on our own, without the help of ads.
Once your hosting account is set up, it’s time to actually get WordPress up and running. Bluehost makes it really easy by installing WordPress in the background. You will be asked to choose a theme. A theme is like a skin for your blog. You can change your theme at any time. Scroll down and choose ‘Skip This Step‘. On the next screen, click on ‘Start Building‘ button to configure your blog.
Hello! I want to be a stay at home mom and I’m basically a single mother. I’m with my child’s father. We just aren’t married yet but he plays basketball overseas so I’m taking care of our daughter by myself. I want to be able to spend more time with her. I’m currently a teacher and it is absolutely miserable and draining the life out of me and my sanity. I would love to get started on becoming a blogger. You have truly inspired me to do it. I’m just very scared and hesitant on spending the money but I’m beyond ready to do it. I started filling out bluest but haven’t completed yet because of the add-ons they are offering and I’m unsure on what to select or unselect but it raises the price it. Could you provide advice? I also wanted to know is there another site you recommend for themes? They are no longer $69, they are $89 now for Elegant themes website. I’m really trying to get this started and am more motivated then ever to do this but I’m just trying to do it in a lower cost if possible. Thank you!
Hello; I thought that points 12 and 13 were the most important. one agrees with what my dad always told me which is that it isn’t what you gross its what you keep. And the other making the point that we need to focus more on those people and companies we already know. I was reminded of this while trying to book venues for an upcoming trip to shoot youtube episodes about theme parks for my amusement industry based channel. the only ones that said yes were the ones i had work with on buying or selling amusement equipment. and you are so right about your story because I am currently struggling with the subject of my blog. the most popular posts are those dealing with my weight loss or my managing a business as a blind person. these get views shares and comments but they don’t necessarily sell anything. they may even be confusing some who follow or thought about following the blog. I don’t want to manage two blogs but i can see how it might be the right thing to do. I also have a similar concern about my other efforts social media, podcasting, youtube videos, google hangouts, etc. I look forward to your thoughts. Thanks for this amazingly detailed and comprehensive post. Take care, max
Now you’ve got many different options to start earning online. If you saw something that really interests you, try it out and learn more about it. If you’re really wanting to make a full-time income online, you need to be dedicated to learning how to do what you want to do. There are tons of free resources out there. You just have to search for them!
Oh, and side note—once you've started generating a decent amount of traffic to your blog, it'll be a smart long-term decision to move up your hosting plan to a managed WordPress hosting provider like Kinsta that have even more features (which is what I use now that I'm in the hundreds of thousands of monthly readers), especially when you're in need of speeding up your WordPress blog.
Although every work or profession needs to be disciplined but as a blogger when you work from home or cafes, discipline is your best friend. It should divide into writing posts, commenting on other blogs and social networking promotion. If you want loyal readers, then you have to post regularly on your blog. If you do not blog regularly, then you will lose your readers.
I am a writer (freelance) of print production, which as we all know, is going the way of the dinosaurs. While your tutorial was helpful, I am a dinosaur. Please send me one link (I will pay a fee, if reasonable, but I only want to pay one fee…and this tutorial leads me (I am sure, incorrectly), to believe I must pay this and that for a domain , host, etc.

Fortunately for us, being active on social media in the months prior to trying to make money blogging really paid off here. As of right now, we have a social reach of nearly 750,000 people each month. Starting a blog has helped immensely with that. What you can charge is largely dependent on your traffic and what an advertiser can expect to make back for paying you for a sponsored post.

These pages are all pretty standard, but they’re also a great way to have some fun and let your readers get to know you. In fact, I use my About page to not only introduce who I am and tell my story, but also to explain my value proposition (for potential clients looking to hire me as a freelance content marketer) and show off some of my recent achievements.
Two of the most popular social media platforms in use are Facebook and Twitter. You can add native videos to Facebook and cater to those that love to watch videos, you can Tweet instant updates on Twitter and invite followers to check out your new blog post. And most importantly, no matter which network you use, you can expand your reach to an audience base you never even knew about.
in my personal opinion, I believe affiliate marketing and blogging is by far the most simple way to put oneself in a position to make money online tested 24 hours a day but this is not a get rich quick overnight operation. In fact, people who dedicate themselves to making affiliate marketing and blogging full-time career left and work twice, thrice, and dozen times harder than the regular day job in order to make it work for them. Why? Because there’s no guarantees of earning one died in online marketing. This is possible with no guarantees of financial stability. But one can make themselves a future “side also millionaire,” if they believe in themselves and do the transformation business work of inspiration for desperation.
Thanks for this really easy-to-follow guide, it was a great help installing my blog. However, I have the same problem as Ellen above. I set up my domain name successfully and installed WordPress. Got an e-mail saying that the WordPress install was successful (as shown in your guide). But when I want to log in to my admin URL it says that the website is not available! and it’s been like that for the last 2 days. Do you know what to do?
If you want to be famous or reach a wide audience, you will have to choose something slightly broader and work hard to make the best content for that topic. A subtopic relating to fitness, finance, or relationship advice is likely to reach the most people. Consider specific but broadly applicable topics such as managing money in college, or a marriage counseling blog.
I had a blog a couple years ago in a pretty precise niche (female musicians), too precise maybe. I had like 20 readers! Now I’d like to try again with another topic but I’m afraid there’s way too much blogs about it already (hippie lifestyle including health, fashion, decor, beauty, printables, etc). I tried checking stats and keywords but I don’t understand any of the information I’m getting. I’d rather pay someone to do the research for me but I have no money. The other thing is that I’m not an expert in anything. The hippie lifestyle thing is the only topic I can think of that would generate more than two article ideas in my brain! Do you think there are solutions for someone in my situation ?
Fortunately for us, being active on social media in the months prior to trying to make money blogging really paid off here. As of right now, we have a social reach of nearly 750,000 people each month. Starting a blog has helped immensely with that. What you can charge is largely dependent on your traffic and what an advertiser can expect to make back for paying you for a sponsored post.
These can each be customized to become incredibly unique websites. However, remember not to get sucked into design right now! Whenever choosing a theme, or customizing one for yourself, focus on creating a clean and uncluttered design. If you’re not satisfied with our suggestions, feel free to browse the WordPress.org theme directory for free alternatives.
The AMP specification is important due to globally slow internet speeds in most countries. While this especially applies to developing countries, most places, including North America, don't offer lightning fast internet speeds on mobile devices. To add to that, many website and blog owners don't understand the mechanics in site speed and how to ensure the framework of a site loads quickly so as not to frustrate visitors.
Some people still don’t know what is a blog? A blog (shortened from the phrase “weblog”) is known as many things—a digital magazine, diary, newscast, collector’s meeting place, a showcase for your art, information sharing, teaching hub, a place to learn and…well, almost anything you want it to be. A typical blog combines text, images, videos and links to relevant pages and media on the Web. Blog readers can leave comments and communicate with the author. In fact, dialogue and interaction are a popular part of a blog’s success.
Of course, there are other CMS options you can look at, such as Squarespace, Ghost, and Wix when learning how to start a blog. However, I strongly recommend setting up a self-hosted WordPress site for your blog as it’s the most sustainable, long-term solution—and really the only option worth considering if you're starting a blog with the eventual goal of making money from your website in some way, shape or form.
“This book is an excellent resource for bloggers, especially bloggers relatively new to blogging (i.e. have been blogging for 2 months to a year or so) and that are looking to take their blog to the next level. Ruth gives you clear advice on how to build a solid foundation for your blog, and she does an amazing job of emphasizing the importance of that foundation and it’s role in helping you make a profit down the road. For Ruth, it’s more about lasting upward momentum than getting rich quick. And I love that! Additionally, Ruth’s advice is valuable even if you are not looking to monetize your blog, since many of the same qualities that make a profitable blog are also ones that grow your readership generally. It quickly becomes apparent that Ruth is all about quality, honesty, action, and organization. I feel like I have a much clearer picture of what kinds of items need to be on my blogging to-do list, and after reading I felt empowered to actually get myself in gear and cross those items off my list.
As you'll see, my first year of blogging saw only about 9,000 total readers, but I wasn't really taking blogging seriously and I was still learning how to drive traffic. In my second year, you'll see traffic begins to pick up dramatically as I start to figure out who my audience is and which traffic strategies work best for me—that's when I started driving almost as much traffic per month than I'd gotten in my entire first year.
Find Your Niche. You needn’t have a niche, but it helps. When learning how to be a blogger, it’s important to ask yourself what you’re passionate about. Running? Cooking? Being a parent? Have you found your passion? If so, whatever it is, write about that. If not, then you must first find your passion. (Note: We generally recommend that people don’t start a blog about minimalism or the paleo diet or any other heavily saturated topic. But what we really mean when we say this is: don’t create a blog about something unless you have a unique perspective. If you’ve embraced simple living and have a unique perspective, then by all means have at it.)
I’ve known Ruth for years. She is one of the authorities on blogging. Four months ago, I caught up with her at BlogHer and she gave me a small piece of advice that transformed one of my blogs. That blog went from 30,000 unique visitors into 300,000 in a matter of months. If there was one book that I would spend money to buy, this is it. From the basics of blogging to in depth marketing and income generation, Ruth really knows what she is talking about. You don’t have to wonder if she really practices what she preaches, she shows you her real numbers. Buy this book, it will change the way you look at blogging.
How qualified are you? Good blogs convey a sense of familiarity and ease with the material. Excellent blogs usually have bloggers who are personally qualified to talk about their topics. If you can’t think of at least 25 separate posts off the top of your head about your topic, you may not have enough familiarity with the topic to keep your content going.

After getting some much needed guidance from a prolific internet entrepreneur, I shifted my focus. I released my first digital product in September last year in the way of an eBook, then a month ago I opened the doors to my own training course (that was scary!) and as you would expect I’ve already surpassed the total earnings of those first 18 months by a good margin.

Time. Once you’ve learned how to start a blog, you’ll learn that blogging takes a lot of time, especially if you’re as neurotic as we are (we spent over eight hours testing the fonts on this site). And see those Twitter and Facebook icons in the header? We spent hours on those, deciding what was right for us). That said, once you have your design set up, don’t tweak it too much. Instead, spend the time on your writing.

Once you setup your account on AdSense you will be given a code to add to your blog. This code will automatically display advertisements on your blog from companies who are part of Google’s advertising network. You may see ads from small companies related to your topic, or you may see ads from large companies that are completely unrelated to your topic.

About Blog The NEO Law Group believes that healthy nonprofits are more effective at creating positive change. We help create and maintain legally compliant nonprofits that have strong foundations on which to build great programs. And we provide practical and affordable counsel, giving leaders reassurance and confidence to best further their valuable missions.

Hi! Thanks for all the helpful tips. I have been blogging on and off for a few years, and am currently using a wordpress.com site but pay for my domain name so it doesn’t have the .wordpress.com at the end of it. If I choose to go through blue boat to host my blog, do I type in my current blog/domain name into the already have one box instead of creating a new one? And will all my current blog content transfer over? Thanks!!! :)
Thanks so much for this great post! I’m a new stay-at-home mom and was researching jobs I could do from home (so I could stay at home for the longterm!) and I kept coming back to blogging. I have read and re-read your post multiple times and downloaded Ruth Soukup’s book; so good! I feel like I’m much more set up for success and not floundering in the dark! I would love any feedback on my website!
The truth is, it's not as easy to carve out your space on the web and make a name for yourself as a blogger today, as it was back when blogging was brand new. And it takes a lot of time to build your audience to the point where it's successful. (The most successful, multi-million dollar blogs today were started around 2005 or earlier.) So it's definitely not something you can get rich quickly with, though many people do work on their blogs full time.
Starting in February 2013, Blogger began integrating user blogs with multiple country-specific URLs. For example, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.com would be automatically redirected to exampleuserblogname.blogspot.ca in Canada, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.co.uk in the United Kingdom. Blogger explained that by doing this they could manage the blog content more locally so if there was any objectionable material that violated a particular country's laws they could remove and block access to that blog for that country through the assigned ccTLD while retaining access through other ccTLD addresses and the default Blogspot.com URL. If a blog using a country-specific URL was removed it is still technically possible to access the blog through Google's No Country Redirect override by entering the URL using the regular Blogspot.com address and adding /ncr after .com.[17] In May 2018, Blogger stopped redirecting to ccTLDs and country-specific URLs would now redirect to the default Blogspot.com addresses.[18]
Perhaps most importantly, you need to choose a responsive design. The term responsive design simply means a design that works on all devices – desktop, tablets, and mobile. It is called this because the design is responsive and adapts its appearance based on the size of the screen it is being viewed on. This creates a pleasant, cohesive user experience for everyone. This is vital because since 2016, more people use the internet from their phones than from a computer desk!
Hi Ramsay, Happy New Year! Another great post from which established bloggers can also benefit. I’ve been getting bogged down with SEO recently so I’m glad of the tips in the comments thread about keeping it, mostly, simple and concentrating on good, long form content. I have a couple of questions. 1. in 2018 do you think narrowing down to a specific niche is super important or is multipotentialite blogging still going to be effective? Yikes – I know I need to work on my strategy 😉 2. I notice when I click on a link in your posts the new post doesn’t open up in a new window – evidently this isn’t an important back-end consideration for you, and perhaps something you do intentionally? 3. For selling a blog would you recommend Flippa or Empire and any chance of a new updated blog post on this (or is your previous one updated already?)

IF something like that were to happen I surmise we can reasonably expect some sort of announcement/warning to the approved API partners (and probably even to the general public). I would say it’s almost impossible they’ll push through some sort of update that suppresses auto-pinned content without us knowing (at least a little) ahead of time, thus giving us time to adjust accordingly.

Create and customize your blog. If you are using a free service, there should be a tutorial to guide you through the initial steps of setting up your blog, as well as a forum for people to ask questions. If you are hosting your own site, you will need someone with web design experience to customize your blog, or you can use software such as WordPress.org to use the same structures available at free services.
Earn a living doing what you love! Whether you have been blogging for years or just a few weeks, How to Blog For Profit (Without Selling Your Soul) will prove a valuable resource. The expanded second edition, offers solid advice and practical action plans for creating an authentic, successful, and profitable blog. Ruth Soukup shares how she grew her own blog to over one million monthly visitors, while earning a full time income, and writing about the things she truly cares about. In this book you will receive actionable steps to be able to achieve your goals:

Protip: A quick way to tell if others are making money in a particular topic or niche is to do a Google search. Do ads show up at the top of the search results when you type in main keywords for that topic? If so, people are making money in that niche (otherwise they wouldn’t spend money on advertising) and there’s potential for you too. But do note, the absence of ads doesn’t necessarily mean you couldn’t make money in a particular niche. Dig deeper and you might find sites do make money but don’t choose to advertise on Google.

I will be rocking my blogging in 2018! Back in the Fall of 2017 I rolled out a modern web site design and a podcast. I’ve also just done an evaluation of what worked last year and the areas where I fell short. I also found it helpful to examine those latter areas to understand why. With those in mind, I know where I need to focus my energy. I’ve even got two new products in the works (both in the editing phase). 2018, here I come!

It’s dependent on traffic. Traffic goes up and down and you never know when it is going to do a major dip. Most advertisers pay based on the number of views their ad will get. This turns you into a traffic monster. You start to look for creative ways to get any kind of traffic, no matter if it’s good traffic or not. This can easily lead to your site becoming another junk site that you try to avoid.
If you are working with a 2-part system like Genesis, you’ll need to upload both the Genesis Theme Framework and the child theme of your choice. Again, read my post about choosing a theme for an explanation of this preferred type of system. If you try to upload your child theme and you do not have the Genesis Framework installed, it will not work. I recommend you upload the Genesis Theme Framework first, then repeat the process with your child theme.
Do you want to know what’s really hard to read? A long paragraph like this. One that is huge and the text is long and the sentences run on and on and on. Even if you start out with a compelling first sentence, eventually people are going to get tired. It’s just too much of a task to take on to read this entire thing. Ain’t nobody got time for that! It makes people’s eyeballs hurt. They want content that they can easily scan over and pick and choose what they want to read. So please, unless you are a writer for the NY Times or moonlight as a ghostwriter for Steven King, do not write blog posts like this.
Don't expect this book to teach you any new or innovative techniques and you won't be let down. It seems like every blogger today who makes a decent living is now writing a book on, you guessed it, blogging. I'd highly suggest spending your time reading stuff written by those whose sole purpose is teaching better blogging techniques...like the Smart Passive Income blog by Pat Flynn or ProBlogger with Darren Rowse.